Category: repentance

Do You Feel Like You Are Drowning?

July 8, 2018 by ChristianHolinessDaily

My two youngest boys are grown and have families of their own. When they were ten and twelve, we took them to the beach on an uninhabited island at a Texas State Park. At one point, I looked up and they gone. I found them far from the beach; they were to my eyes but specs in the water. They had been wandered far from shore. When I called, they struggled to return, fighting a riptide. I swam towards deeper water, yelling for them to swim at an angle towards me, instead of straight to the beach.

In the Bible water is often synonymous with chaos, sin, or evil. In the beginning, the earth was formless, void, and full of darkness… Chaotic.

When the nation of Israel escapes Egypt, God not only defeats Pharaoh, he defeats the waters. For Christians, the next generation crossing of the Jordan symbolizes the passing of life and entering life eternal.

Baptism took on new meaning for us with the resurrection of Christ. It came to symbolize our death and burial with He who saves us and our subsequent resurrection.

In the psalms, water represents our enemies, physical or spiritual. In the Psalm 69, the enemy is represented as deep waters, mire or muck, a raging flood, and an abyss. David has come to an end of himself. He is helpless, powerless, outnumbered, accused, and (vs. 19) guilty.

We too must come to the end of ourselves before God may act in His fullness. Paul says it best in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Do you feel like you are drowning, like you are ready to die? Give it up. Surrender to Christ, and He will make you alive. For when you are weak, He will be strong for you.

Rescued From the Depths

July 3, 2018 by ChristianHolinessDaily

I was a 17 year old brat. My mom and step-dad had moved away, leaving me to sleep on a friend’s sofa. The youngest of five, and – by far – the most troublesome of five, it must have been a relief to them to be rid of me. No one knew how to handle me. With little or no adult supervision, a friend of mine begged me to go spelunking… cave exploring with him and a couple of other friends. “It will be great,” said Mike. “There is an underground river in it and a beach that you can only get to by swimming underwater, but no one has ever to reach it.”

“But, three or four people have died trying,” said Bobby. His brother nodded in agreement.

“If no one has ever been able to reach it, then how do you know it’s there?” I asked.

“It just is. We know,” they said.

We drove a couple hours south of town before turning off into the wilds of the Ozark Mountains. Squeezed between two hillsides, the opening was barely wide enough to slither through on my belly. Inside, though, one could sit up. In a lower cavern, I was able to stand up. The sound of distant rushing waters could be heard from below. We crawled through an even deeper passage into a large cavern. The room was cold and damp. At the far end, an underground river rushed beneath a ten-foot drop. A rope that had been tied from the top led into the river and disappeared beneath the black water.

“There it is,” said Mike, stripping down to his shorts. He plunged in, flashlight in hand.

I was frightened. The two other boys followed. I was the last one to dive in. I was afraid of being pulled under by the current and sucked into the rocks where the river again disappeared. I was more afraid, though, of being called chicken. Eventually, I, too, dove in. When I hit the water, my flashlight went out.

The boys, dived underwater. I was left in the dark. They followed the rope underwater and beneath a fallen stalactite. They came up just out of sight on the right of me. I could see the glow of their lights but, around a corner. I was left in the dark. They taunted me, and told me to follow them, but I had no idea how to get there, and no light to guide me. I could make out where they were, but just barely.

At last, I could take no more of their name-calling and dove under the water into icy darkness. I followed the curve of the slimy stalactite, eventually finding the rope, and came up some twenty feet away beyond a large rock. The little mud beach on which they sat was covered with old beer cans and the remains of several campfires. We were not the first ones to make this journey, as we had supposed. This had been a party spot for years.

I have often looked back at that day, and the many summer days after it that the four of us visited that cave with girls whom we wished to impress, and wondered why it is so easy to follow the taunts of peer pressure and so hard to follow the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit. Why is it so easy to fulfill the desires of the body, and so hard to even hear the leading of the Spirit? Why is it so important to us to please the ego, while we neglect pleasing God?

That summer was all about answering the call of the cave. I learned the hard way that it is not always best to give into peer pressure. Several weeks and several visits later, some of us went back to the cave with girlfriends. The girl I was with lost hold of the rope and was swept away into the rocks before she was able to come up for air. She had a gash on her forehead and was barely able to make the swim out of the water and climb up the rope and out of the cave. Nearly an hour later, when we finally exited the cave, she was covered with blood from her head. The cut took several stitches. It was all her dad could do to keep from pummeling me. I deserved it and would have felt better had he done it.

God eventually took me to the place where I begged Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit and keep me from such temptations, but it took many more near-tragedies and many more years before I heeded His call. The cave has since been block off. The pile of rocks in front of it remind me that God no longer lets me go down to such depths. Instead, He protects me; by filling me with His Spirit, He has given me the strength to… well to live; for what I called living before, was really no life at all.

Only When We Die…

June 30, 2018 by ChristianHolinessDaily

Only when Elijah told God he wanted to die did God give Elijah the strength to live

There comes a time in every Christian’s life when God allows us to reap what we’ve sown. Specifically, immature Christians often see the wages of sin, especially sin from which we have not repented. I have.

I found myself flat on my back, having sunk lower than I could have ever imagined. I had nowhere else to turn… No one else to turn to, but to God.

Actually, that has happened a few times in my life. Call me a slow learner. Each low, after that first one, was more of a plateau. As a result, each crisis led to an ever closer relationship with God.

That’s our topic today: the life crisis that leads to surrender.

While the experiences that have led me to a deeper walk with Christ are certainly unique, the crisis experience itself is not. Most people endure at least two such experiences in their spiritual journey.

The first such crisis is the one through which God worked to lead us to salvation. Since I can rightfully assume that most of my readers and listeners are Christian, I won’t expound upon it.

The second crisis is the one that God uses to sanctify us. It is at that point that He fills us with His Holy spirit. It is that point that we realize that God is cleaning house, revealing to us or wicked hearts and asking us to repent of sins big and small. He sweeps those sins out the door and fills us with more of His love.

The great holiness preacher of the early 20th century, Buddy Robinson, described sanctification as a boiling pot in which sin rises to the top, and is skimmed away by God. At one point, he thought that if God didn’t turn down the fire, there would be nothing left to skim.

It is not a fair analogy to compare the journey of an Old Testament prophet to a Christian journey, but the parallel is so close, that I cannot resist it.

We read 1 Kings 19 where Elijah is exhausted. He’s flat on his back and tells God that he’s ready to die. He hit bottom. Here’s the lesson:

It wasn’t until Elijah told God that he was ready to die that God gave him the strength to live.

There is the parallel. Take a look at Ephesians 2. I urge you to read the entire chapter. Even will focus on verses 4 and 5 from the NIV.

…because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions —it is by grace you have been saved.

This – described in Ephesians 2 – is the crisis experience that leads to salvation.

1 Thessalonians 4:3 ESV – For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;

I encourage you to read Roman’s chapters 6-8. This describes the crisis experience and a before and after picture of sanctification. Here are some key verses: Romans 6:11-14 NIV

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.